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Intoxicate the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18051 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Two—The Way Out

            The climb out of Azkaban was like a dream.

            Draco took his mother across the bridge first, because his father insisted and the other revolutionaries had already cleared off to open other cell doors. She leaned on his arm and looked around at the darkness of the prison as though she had never seen it before, though Draco had imagined that she would be tired of looking at it if she was tired of anything. More than once, she put out a hand and seemed to feel the darkness, to stroke it as if it were a great, purring cat she was petting.

            “Why are you doing that?” Draco finally asked her.

            “Because,” said his mother, her voice a beautiful sigh, “there is space.”

            Draco had to turn his head away, and not for the first time since he found her. He wanted to grit his teeth. He wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, that had stolen seven years of his mother’s freedom when she had saved Potter’s bloody life. But screaming wouldn’t get revenge for his parents or get them out of here safely, and at the moment, Draco had to put the second goal above the first. He locked his teeth together instead, locked the muscles of his throat, and gently guided Narcissa’s footsteps.

            When they reached the stairs, she had to rest for a time. Draco stood guard over her and turned his head sharply when someone came towards him. He had hoped it was Weasley, the one person whose company he might have welcomed at the moment, but it was Catchers, who gave him a glare as steady and arrogant as the will of the Ministry when they had assigned his parents to prison in the first place.

            “This is a fool’s dream,” he said. “How are we going to get them out of here if we have to give them all the same amount of care that you’re giving her?” He jerked his head towards Narcissa, as if speaking her name was beneath him.

            “Worry about the rest,” Draco responded. “I’m only here for my parents.” He turned, glancing out along the bridge that led to the cells where Lucius still was. He would need to go in a moment, but his mother was leaning her head against his thigh, gulping in breaths as she recovered, and he knew that she wouldn’t forgive him for moving away right now.

            “That’s all you care about,” Catchers said. “Your own loyalties. Your own plans. You would have betrayed Potter to the Ministry if they could have promised safety and freedom for your parents, wouldn’t you?”

            Draco glanced up. “I think you would betray him for less concrete rewards than that.”

            Catchers closed his eyes in the same inexpressible weariness that Draco had seen Professor Snape use more than once. “You tire me,” he said, and then moved away long another bridge to fetch someone else. Draco stroked his mother’s hair and murmured wordless reassurances to her, then touched his wand to her left hand and snipped all the nails off with a single cosmetics charm. He did the same thing to her right hand and knelt in front of her, massaging her fingers and smiling into her eyes.

            “I have to go fetch Father,” he whispered. “You’ll be glad when he’s here, won’t you? So that you can have someone to be with you, someone to comfort you?”

            For a long moment, his mother’s hand tightened so convulsively that Draco thought she wouldn’t let him go. Then she released him with the barest puff of a grave-laugh. “Go and get him, Draco. I won’t die in the time that it takes you to do that.”

            Draco heard the hollowness behind her voice and knew she was speaking more from a desire to appear strong than from actual, rational conviction. He kissed her on the cheek and rose. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

            She nodded, and let him go. Draco squeezed her hand, hard, and in the end he was the one who had to work to part from her, far more than she from him.

            This time, the trip along the bridge went much faster, and he managed to reach the quartet of cells without feeling out of breath or as though he would collapse from the singing and yanking of his chain. The chain was quiet now, thank Merlin; it knew that the individuals who bore Malfoy blood had been rescued. Draco leaned against the door and nodded to his father as though he was coming back from a walk across the Manor grounds.

            “Are you ready to go home, Father?”

            Lucius smiled with a bloodless twitch of his lips. “Home sounds wonderful, Draco, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. The Ministry would know the moment Narcissa and I returned to the Manor.” He sat at the very edge of the cell, his hands splayed on the floor in front of him, as though he wanted to stand up and walk out the door, but didn’t quite dare. That was sensible, Draco thought. The ledge in front of him was narrow, and he didn’t know how much practice Lucius had in walking more than the few paces his cell covered.

            “Well,” Draco conceded, “I’m giving it the title of home more by courtesy than anything else. But it’s a place where you can recover, and rest, and be safe until we decide what to do next.”

            “Who did this?” Lucius looked up at him, and his eyes had a flash like the gleam from a diving hawk’s beak in the blackness.

            Draco didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. He could have said that he and the rest of the revolutionaries had done it, of course they had, they were here, but Lucius would mean who was the motive power behind it, because he always did. He met Lucius’s gaze and nodded a bit, as though to acknowledge something he’d previously said. “Potter.”

            Lucius’s eyes closed in pain.

            Draco shook his head, although it hardly mattered when his father wasn’t looking at him, and murmured, “It’s not like that. I don’t serve him in the same way that you served him. I joined the revolution in the first place for you, to free you.” He looked around to see if anyone else was standing near him. They weren’t, but they were passing back and forth on the bridges, and this didn’t seem like the right time to tell his father that had joined the revolution in the first place as a spy for the Ministry, rather than a whole-hearted soldier for Potter. “I promise, Father. I haven’t surrendered to him.”



“I fear for you,” Lucius whispered. “At least I had never been obsessed with my lord, never dreamed of following him when I could not, never looked at him with my heart in my eyes and something like adoration on the day that he gave me back my wand.”

Draco flinched. All those things were true. But he resented the implication that he had adored Potter, and he couldn’t let his father go on believing it.

            “He trusts me because I saved his life from an artifact the Ministry used on him,” he said coldly. “And when all was said and done, the Ministry didn’t even let me visit you. I came to him because he promised that he would raid Azkaban and free you. He’s doing it. That’s it, Father. That’s all. I used him for you and for the sake of freeing my only remaining family. That’s the only reason.”

            Lucius opened his eyes and looked up searchingly. Then he raised an arm. Draco wrapped a hand around it and urged his father to his feet, though he did wonder if the stiffness of the muscles conveyed rejection or only the bracing that Lucius had to do against the pull. He was very light. Draco repressed the temptation to count his father’s ribs and instead met his gaze, awaiting his judgment.

            “We will speak of this later,” Lucius said.

            Relief blew through Draco, but he contented himself with bowing, offering his father his arm again now that he was standing, and beginning the long escort of him across the bridge, to the stair where his mother was waiting for them with the light of hope in her eyes.

*

            The dragons were flying in ovals by the time that the first procession of prisoners appeared, straggling across the island while leaning on the arms of his people. Harry exhaled hard in relief and then looked up. The nearest dragon was the Opal-eye, circling with his gaze sometimes on the ground below and sometimes on Harry. Harry could tell from the subtle pattern of his wings how good it would feel to burn.

            Harry smiled at him and hissed through the wheel, You can if you like.

            The Opal-eye might have hesitated out of instinctive mistrust a few hours before, but not now. It breathed out joyously, and lances of fire stabbed down through the air towards the island, the prison, and the walking humans.

            But they had to pass Harry first, and he reached out with his wild magic, a swirling force that cloaked his shoulders in red and gold, and grabbed them. He bent and reshaped the fire into ropes, as he had when he bound the guards, and shook them out from his fingers, from his shoulders, from points in the misty air where his power reached. Ropes dangled, and Harry moved them towards the dragons with a flick of his fingers. Ropes dangled now from all the other dragons he had summoned, and they gave small, surprised roars, turning their heads as though they expected them to simply fade.

            Do you see? Harry told the Opal-eye, who was stirring the most against his control, its soul throwing off sparks. You burned, and the burning is still here. It did not fade, the way that so much fire and beauty does after you create it.

            That was a complex set of concepts, not one he would have tried to explain to a snake, and he wondered if the wheel or the dragons would struggle with it. For a moment, the Opal-eye paused with its tongue flickering out, and then bowed its head and accepted the message. The message passed down the line of swaying tails and horned heads.

            Harry turned and guided the ends of the ropes down onto the island, altering their nature as they went, so that they burned only in color and became firmer and stronger.

            He saw some of the prisoners start back and refuse to take them at first, but red hair blazed through the mist, and Ron and George would be down there, persuading them to climb. Harry smiled and half-closed his eyes, because he could watch the dragons better with his ears. He needed to know if one of them turned and started flying in a new direction, or attempted to take off with the fire-ropes on its body.

            Ron would order people along, and they would obey, because of the calm strength in his voice. George would laugh and joke and perhaps stare at people, with that intensity that seemed to connote two pairs of eyes, until they got moving. Draco—

            Harry shook his head. Draco wouldn’t be ordering people along, because he only cared for his parents, and he would have them, exactly as he had wanted. Harry knew he would be standing near them, watching over them and challenging anyone, especially Catchers, to approach with the coldness of his eye.

            He opened his eyes and looked down to see if he could spot a gleam of platinum hair, but either it was too exactly the color of the mist or he wasn’t as used to looking for it as he was red hair, because he saw no sign. He shrugged and turned to check on the dragons again.

            The stag made of lightning watched him from a spot in midair less than ten feet away, between Harry’s dragon and the Hebridean Black that most of his other people had ridden. It stamped one hoof on the clouds when it saw him looking and began to move away, trotting in slow, exaggerated motions and glancing over its shoulder at him.

            Harry turned his head away, and watched as Ron began to rise up the first of the robes that led to Harry’s dragon with a woman following him whose hair was pure white and who wore tattered robes all in a uniform shade of gray. Harry could almost hear Ron’s coaxing of her from here. She seemed to be healthy enough to climb, which Harry had to admit he was glad about. He hadn’t been sure all the prisoners would be. Of course, he could command the dragons to land near the island so that the prisoners could climb up onto them if so, but it would have been more trouble than it was worth since they could climb.

            A scuffle from the island caught his attention. Harry leaned down, squinting, and thought he made out the three-platinum-haired figures he had expected stepping aside from the others. Draco looked as if he had arms around both their shoulders.

            “Why are we doing this with the ropes?” Draco’s voice was faint and far away, but Harry could orient on that sound through greater distances than the one that separated them. “Why not Apparate them back to the manor?”

            “Because that would take too long,” someone else, who sounded like George, said. “Harry doesn’t think he can control the dragons when they see prey vanishing from in front of them, not to mention that some of the prisoners don’t need to know the Apparition coordinates. And you’d have to take down most of the wards around the island before you could do it.”

            “I am going to take my parents that way.”

            Harry called down before an argument could start. “Draco has my permission, as long as the only ones he Apparates are his parents.”

            George took a step back and tilted his head up, and although Harry couldn’t make out his eyes very well from this height, he was sure that he could feel his disbelief. “This is Lucius Malfoy, Harry. Are you sure?”

            “Who’s spent the last seven years in prison,” Harry said. “Who has paid for his crimes, and needs to rely on our help right now, since he doesn’t have friends and he can’t go to the Ministry. I think I’ll take the chance, George.”

            George turned away without another word. Draco took the arm of the slighter figure, who was probably his mother, and whispered to her. A moment later, he began the long strokes of his wand in the air that would tear down the anti-Apparition wards around the island. Harry shrugged. It really didn’t matter to him how they traveled, and it was possible Draco knew enough Dark spells to accomplish it quickly. Besides, once the wards were down, then he thought it likely that others would choose to be transported or to transport prisoners that way.

            “You’re going to pay for that decision, mate.” Ron was beside him on the dragon now, assisting the white-haired woman to settle. Harry checked out the progress of other pairs on the ropes. All the dragons held steady so far, and the instructions to do so traveled up and down the line in the steady beating of their wings.

            “Why?” Harry asked. “I’m sure there are lots of people who would probably rather travel by Apparition than dragonback.”

            Ron glanced at him, head on one side. “You don’t know?”

            Harry shook his head. “Is it because I disagreed with George in front of everybody? Is it because they don’t trust the prisoners?”

            “Some of those, although they don’t really look up to George as a leader.” Ron leaned in. “But because you gave Malfoy the ability to make the decision. The rest of them will start asking each other why you trust him, and they might reach the right conclusion.”

            “What’s the right conclusion?” Harry looked unblinkingly into Ron’s eyes, rather interested in the answer.

            “That you care for him more than you should,” Ron said, and looked back unaffected. The woman he’d brought up glanced between them both, her arms folded across her chest as she shivered. Harry sighed and cast a Warming Charm, then turned to smile at her. She didn’t look reassured until he pulled back his hair and she could see his scar by the light of the charm on Ron’s wand.

            “They said that you were coming into the prison and torturing people, but I knew that couldn’t be true,” she whispered, reaching out and squeezing his hand hard enough to make Harry wince a bit. “You would never do something like that. You’re still a hero, our hero.”

            Harry disengaged as soon as he could, with a few nonsense words that made her settle down with a smile. Then he turned back to Ron and shook his head. “We are going to discuss this,” he said.

            “Oh, I agree,” Ron said, and tossed Harry a significant look before he climbed down the rope again. Harry was left to talk to the rescued prisoner and try to reassure her as best he could as he waited for the others to come up.

            Do I care for Draco more than I should?

            Harry shook his head. Impossible to answer that question, because it was impossible to say how much he should care for Draco. Did Ron think friendship was unacceptable but courtesy was fine? Or did he think friendship was acceptable and something else wasn’t?

            Harry gave a small shiver and then smiled. Surely he was the one who ought to set the boundaries, and Draco was the only other one who had any say in it.

            The golden stag tried to catch his eye again, but Harry turned his head to survey the ground below, his mouth busy with reassurances, resolutely ignoring whatever strange magic wanted him to follow it into the night.

*

            Draco couldn’t bring down the anti-Apparition wards.

            It had seemed such a simple plan when it first occurred to him. Why not take all the prisoners home that way? Of course, it would mean many journeys, but considering how long they had flown on the dragons to reach the island, Draco thought the total time wouldn’t be much longer. And that way they could give the prisoners directly into the hands of people who could comfort them or cage them up, as was required.

            He felt his spine stiffen as he thought about it. No one is going to put my parents in a cage any longer, no matter what their intentions are.

            But he couldn’t bring down the wards. He could cut through one layer, but there was another beyond that, as if he was fighting his way through an enormous set of formal robes, all draped fabric above another swath of fabric. And when he turned and tested the air behind him, thinking that he might be able to cut a hole above his own small position if not the whole of the island, he found the wards he had cut regenerating from sparks of magic. The Ministry had hired experts to defend this place.

            Panting, upset, red-faced, Draco slumped down on a rock and shook his head when his mother glanced at him. “We can’t Apparate out.”

            “We must.” That was his father. Lucius could walk on his own better than Narcissa could, but Draco thought he shared her uneasiness with so much space around him. He darted continual glances in most directions, and his hands continued to come up and rub his shoulders as if he didn’t know what to do with them when he wasn’t bumping into walls. “We must break free of Potter. You are going to take us to the Manor.”

            Draco swallowed back irritation. His parents couldn’t know how much had changed in the past seven years, he reminded himself. That time must seem nightmare-like to them. “We can’t do that, remember,” he said. “The Ministry has wards and alarms on the Manor that would register our presence. The property really belongs to them, not us anymore. They only let me stay there on sufferance.”

            Lucius stared at him. “Why did you allow them to do this?” he asked. His mother caught Draco’s arm with nails that still resembled claws, even after his Clipping Charm, and looked up at him with worried eyes.

            “It wasn’t a matter of allowing,” Draco said. “They were stronger than I was, and we had no allies. It seemed better to yield and stay alive than wear myself out with fighting a useless battle.” He watched with some irritation as the holes he had chopped in the wards all regrew their defenses. He took a deep breath and looked up at the dragons. He had declared that he was going to take his parents back to the manor with Apparition, and it seemed impossible to change his mind now.

            “You have not yet learned the measure of strength that I expected from you,” Lucius whispered.

            Draco ignored that as best he could, and gamely lifted his wand for another attempt. Then he felt a presence at his elbow, and turned his head. Weasley stood there, the Weasley that Draco had saved earlier and who had boosted him up to his mother’s cell, not the crazy inventor, watching him with large eyes.

            “What?” Draco snapped.

            “I don’t think I can help you do it,” Weasley said. “Not when the wards are already resisting you and those cutting spells I’ve never seen before.” He gave Draco an oblique look, an invitation to explain, that Draco ignored entirely. Weasley sighed and continued. “But I can tell you that you can come back on that dragon, with your parents, and fly home with us, and no one is going to think less of you, Harry least of all.”

            “I defied him to his face,” Draco said shortly. “He has to think less of me, at least in front of everyone else, or they’re going to think less of him. He wouldn’t risk losing his command over those people like Catchers because of me.”

            The smile that traveled slowly across Weasley’s face was faint, but real. “What makes you think that Harry cares about that?” he asked. “What in any of his behavior has given you the impression that he’s politically savvy?”

            “Do not trust him,” Lucius hissed from behind Draco. “There’s nothing the Weasleys would like better than to destroy us.”

            Draco ignored him for the moment. Another thing that had changed that his parents couldn’t understand. Then again, Draco wasn’t sure that he understood it himself. “All right, granted,” he said. “But—you can’t tell me that you approve of the way he regards me and the license he allows me, Weasley.”

            Weasley rolled his eyes. “Of course I don’t. But I would rather that he go mad over you than some of the other people I could mention.” He shot a look in the direction of the rope that Draco thought Catchers was climbing. “And you—you need help getting them out of here. Come on, Malfoy. Up the ropes you go.”

            Draco swallowed. He had wanted to burn the world for his parents, burn even Potter for them, only half-an-hour ago. And now he was accepting help from Weasley, assurance from Weasley that ultimately originated in Potter, and proof of Potter’s bizarre affection for him.

            He didn’t know where, exactly, he stood at the moment, and he hated that.

            But he could also tell when he had to shut up and listen to advice, and this was one of those times. “All right,” he said. “Help me, Weasley.”

            He soothed his feelings by making that an order, and Weasley satisfied his own sense of order by moving around so that he could take Narcissa’s arm. She stared at him uncertainly, but he was still a pure-blood, which Draco knew satisfied her sense of propriety. Draco took his father’s arm.

            Lucius watched him with eyes that held something suspiciously like hatred.

            Draco looked away.

*

            SP777: It would depend on what I had planned for the story, wouldn’t it?

            And yeah, Ron and Draco already have misgivings about Lucius.

            kit: Thank you! Both Harry and Draco and Ron and Draco are getting closer, I think.
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Intoxicate the Sun